Bicycle Safety on Essex

A white kid, a black guy, two cops, and a great American novelist have a run-in on Manhattan's Lower East Side.

Three of my favorite sayings are "God is a first-rate novelist," "God is a second-rate novelist," and "The fact that something really happened is the defense of the mediocre novelist." For the last novel I wrote I spent a lot of time on the Lower East Side. And as is my wont, I wound up in the back of police cars a lot. The Lower East Side is a very low-crime area right now. It used to be the worst, but Giuliani and real estate pressure took care of that. Now the police basically have nothing to do down there in terms of crime. So what they do is they sit in fake taxis, you know—four beefy white guys in a fake taxi by the side of the Williamsburg Bridge—and they eyeball what's coming over from Brooklyn. If the car looks like a $200 shitbox or somebody's got an Afro or a ponytail, they pull in behind the car, and they wait to see if the guy's going to go all polite in his driving, like put on lane-change signals, and then they know he's dirty.

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It's fishing, really. It's a big fishing hole, Delancey Street. And I'd spent all night in this bogus taxi with about 850 pounds of white beef. And, at this point, it's the end of the night, and they made their collars, and there are two cops up front, and I'm sitting in the back. When I ride with these guys, I don't really comment on what they do; I don't engage them in any kind of debate. I'm there to bear witness, and then see what I can do with it in my work.

They're riding up Essex Street, it's kind of Miller time, and as they're going they pass a black guy on a bicycle. He's about thirty years old with dreads. And on the crossbars, he's got a white kid about nine, ten years old. The black guy and the white kid, they're kind of chatting, the kid's looking up at the guy. They look like they're familiar with each other. And the cops drive by, and they're dead silent, and after about a block, one guy says to the other, "Hey, big guy. Does that look fishy to you? It's fucking midnight, what's going on here?" And the other one says, "Well, what do you want to do, big guy?"

So they pull over, bike's coming up Essex, one of the cops steps in the road, puts his hand out, and says, "Hey, how you doing? Get off the bike, please?"

The black guy gets off the bike, and he goes, "Hey, officers!" You know, like it's an unexpected treat.

And the cop says, "Did you ever hear of helmets?"

"Oh! Yeah, gee. I'm really sorry."

At which point the other cop says to the little white kid, "Hey, big guy, what's your name?"

The kid goes, "Um, Noah Rosenberg?" You know, like he's not sure.

And one cop says, "Hey, Noah, come here, buddy. Come on over here."

And he separates the two, and I'm sort of hopping in between the two conversations at this point. The black guy tries to follow the white kid, and the other cop puts his hand on his chest and says, "No, you stay over here. Let me see some ID."

The guy says, "What?"

"Some ID. Don't look at him, look at me."

"I was just picking him up from a playdate."

The cop says, "Did I ask you that?"

"No, no. You don't understand, I-I work the bar at Schiller's—"

Again, did I ask you that?!"

"Well, no."

"Why you trying to divert me?!"

"I'm not."

"Go down the same road as me."

"Okay, okay."

And he gives the cop the ID, at which point the guy sort of waves to the kid, and the cop says, "What did I just say to you?"

And he points to the curb, and he makes the guy sit on the curb with his feet in the gutter, and he says, "So where are you going? It's kind of late to be driving around with a kid on a bike, isn't it?"

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"Well, I had the late shift."

At which point I leave those two, and I go over to Noah and the other cop, and that cop says, "So, your name's Noah, huh?"

And the kid says, "Yes, and for the millionth time, I don't have an ark!"

"Well, yeah, like one and a quarter years? He's kind of like my godfather since my other godfather died."

"Okay. And what do you guys do?"

"Well, he was taking me home from a playdate to my mom's."

"So he knows your mom?"

"Well, yeah, he and my mom are kind of like friends."

And the cop says, "Kind of like?"

Noah says, "Well, they have, like, sleepover dates."

"So your mom knows that you're with him now?"

"Well, my mom sent him to pick me up because my dad lives in Woodstock." At which point, I'm going, Okay, let's see what's happening over with Cleve.

I walk over there, and Cleve's sitting on the curb, and he's got his feet out there, and he's trying to make it look like it's natural. So he's deep-massaging his thigh muscles, like he's limbering up for the marathon or something, you know. It's just humiliating as shit, and he's kind of smiling because he can't win, you got to play it through.

And he's sitting there, and the other cop is hitting his driver's license with a Maglite, one of those big, powerful flashlights, and he goes, "So, Cleveland, I see you're from Ohio."

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"Yeah," he says.

"Cleveland from Cleveland, huh?"

"Well, actually, Oxford."

And the cop goes, "Oh! Miami College!"

And Cleveland goes, "Yeah, yeah, that's where I went."

"Oh! Wally Szczerbiak!" Who's this big basketball player.

"Well, yeah, Wally was a little before my time."

"Oh, did you play ball for them too?"

"Well, not basketball. I played soccer."

The cop goes, "Oh, that's amazing, because I coach soccer out on the Island, the kids' league. And I keep waiting for that sport to blow up."

And Cleveland's going, "Yeah, yeah. That's amazing." He's sitting, you know, just wiping the street crap off his pants. At which point a Mustang comes by with two black guys in it, and the guy in the shotgun seat looks out the window, and he sees Cleveland sitting on a curb, and he starts yelling out, "Homeboy to base! Homeboy to base! We got a black man down! I repeat, a black man down!" And he's laughing his ass off, and the Mustang floors it. Cleveland's squinting, and he's looking the other way. He's just mortified.

And then I'm hopping back to the other cop with the kid.

"So, Noah, does Cleveland live with you?"

"No. Cleveland lives at 444 Avenue D. We live at 333 Avenue B."

"Well, you ever been over to his house?"

"Only about a million times."

"Mostly with your mom, I guess, huh?"

He says, "And by myself."

"Oh, really? What do you do there?"

He says, "Well, you know, sometimes we walk his dog. It's a Rhodesian ridgeback named Mars. And one time he tried to teach me how to make scrambled eggs, but I don't really like his oven because you light the pilot match, and it goes pshhhhht, you know, and it scares me. One time, my mom had to go to court in Woodstock, and I stayed with Cleveland for three days."

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The cop says, "Court, huh?"

"Yeah."

"Three days?"

"Yeah," he says, "but mostly, I'd say eighty-two and a half percent of the time, we watched television."

"You and Cleveland."

"Yeah, me and Cleve."

And the cop says to him, "Do you ever do anything else with him?"

"What do you mean?"

"Do you do anything else with him?"

And all of a sudden, the kid's eyes get really big and wet like steel. And the kid starts breathing heavy, starts shaking a little bit.

And the cop says to him, "Hey, Noah, look at this," and he pulls his jacket back, and he shows him his detective shield, and he says, "You know what that is?"

"It's a police badge."

"You know what this means?"

"What."

"That means that you can tell me anything you want, and you'll be perfectly safe. Do you understand that?"

And the kid looks at him. "Oh my God! Are you going to arrest him?"

And the cop, his heart's pumping Kool-Aid, and he starts moving over, and he says, "Why?"

And the kid says, "If you fucking assholes arrest him again one more time just because he's black and I'm not, I'm going to kill myself! You came into my apartment and dragged him out because the crazy lady next door said he was a rapist, you put him in handcuffs when he came to pick me up at school, you pulled him away from me at the street fair and made me wait for my mom! I swear to God, I'm going to lose my mind!"

And the cops go, "Whoa! Easy, easy, easy!" At which point they're looking at each other like, What's going on?

And all of a sudden Cleveland sees the kid's losing it, and he goes, "Hey, Noah, buddy."

And the cop says, "What did I just say to you?! Stop talking to the kid!"

At which point Cleveland says, "Officer, you want to put this to rest? I tell you what, I'm going to reach for my cell phone in here. Why don't you call the kid's mom and just see what's going on?"

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The cop says, "I'll call the kid's mom. What's her name?"

"Dana."

And he calls across to the other cop, "Get the kid's mother's name."

And the kid through sobs is going, "Dana," and Cleveland gives the cop the mother's number.

The cop calls, and he says, "Hey, how you doing? This is Sergeant Kelley from the Eighth Precinct. Who am I speaking to?"

"Oh my God, Dana Rosenberg. What happened?"

He goes, "Nothing happened. I just need to know, do you know where your son is right now?"

At which point she freaks: "Where is he? What happened? He's supposed to be with Cleveland, he's supposed to be taking him home from a playdate. What happened? What happened? WHAT HAPPENED?"

"Well, no, no, no, he's fine, okay?"

At which point the kid says to the one cop, "My mom says that if I get any more nervous I'm going to have to live with my father in Woodstock, you fuck!"

"No, no, no, the kid's great, the kid's fine. The only thing is they were riding without helmets, and it's a serious safety violation."

And she's going, "Oh my God, oh Jesus!"

"Okay, don't worry about it, all right? Have a good night," and he hangs up, and they bring Cleveland and Noah together again, and they give them this half-assed lecture on bicycle safety.

The cop says, "I'm supposed to write you up. But I'm going to give you a pass this time." And Cleveland's still kind of smiling, but the smile never reaches his eyes. And he gets back on the bike, and the kid gets on the handlebars, and the kid's going through that postcrying jag, you know, shudder withdrawal, and Cleveland's kind of talking him down as he pushes off, and they disappear up Essex.

We get back in the police car, and I'm sitting in the back, and I'm not saying a fucking thing. And we go in dead silence for about two blocks, and one cop finally says to the other, "You know something, big guy?"

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And the other guy says, "What's that, big guy?"

He says, "It still feels fishy to me."

And the other cop says, "Hey, we gave it a shot, man. That's all we can do."

Richard Price, who was born in the Bronx in 1949, is the author of eight novels. He won an Edgar Award, shared with eight other writers, for his writing on the HBO series The Wire in 2007, and he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2009. His most recent book, Lush Life, was published in 2008.

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